Social Immobility

Lower-achieving pupils from rich families earn more than talented poorer children, the Education Secretary, Justine Greening, has admitted. 

Children from high-income backgrounds who show signs of low academic ability at age five are 35 per cent more likely to become high earners than their poorer peers who show early signs of high ability,” Ms Greening said. She added: “Graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds who do make it to the top jobs still earn, on average, over £2,200 a year less than their colleagues who happen to have been born to professional or managerial parents – even when they have the same educational attainment, the same role and the same experience.”

Paul Gregg, professor in economic and social policy at the University of Bath, added: “For children educated in the 1980s, Britain had an unenviable record of being a society where a person’s origin determined their destiny.